I spent ages trying to find a solution, and even went as far as rolling back to an earlier version of WordPress on one site. Finally, I found the solution – and it’s a pretty simple one. All I needed to do was install a plugin called Use Google Libraries. I still don’t understand what caused the problem or why this particular plugin fixes it – but fix it it indeed does. Hope that helps someone else!

It’s not often that proofreading – or lack of – becomes a front page news story, but that’s exactly what happened last week,

Another typo-related story, with the potential for a more serious outcome, was reported by the Daily Mail in the same week. An American man accidentally pressed the 0 key instead of the 8 on his mobile phone when setting up a bank payment. The error meant he was 80 cents short on his mortgage payment, triggering a letter threatening him with foreclosure despite him sending a cheque for the outstanding money. The bank has since rescinded the warning, but the man has decided he’ll stick to cheques in future!

Another Mail Online story reported the rather foolish vandalism attack on Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s house by a group calling themselves Real Fathers for Justice. If you’re going to the effort of buying spray paint and breaking into a property to vandalise it, you’d think you’d make the effort to get the spelling right too!

Finally, a report by IT security company Sophos discovered that making mistakes when you type in a URL can have serious consequences thanks to “typosquatters”. These unscrupulous souls register domain names that are very similar to existing websites, in the hope that people will mistype the URL and land on a rogue site instead. Sophos looked at six popular websites –  Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and their own site – and investigated over 2000 domains that had one character added, deleted or changed in the address – for example, twitterz.com  and facemook.com. The report found over 80% of the domain names had been “typosquatted” and while most of them were harmless, 5% were either adult or cybercrime sites. Landing on one of those would be a nasty shock if you were just trying to buy a new iPad …

So what’s the point of me reporting all these stories? I’m not a grammar Nazi (despite popular opinion!) and proofreading isn’t the be all and end all of life – but these stories do demonstrate that you need to have your proofreader’s head on, even on social media sites!

Today’s Hangout was organised by Julian Wellings of Expertise on Tap, and five 4Networking members took part. I joined a little late and the Hangout was in full flow, but it was really easy to join in. To use Hangouts you need a webcam and either a mic and speakers or a headset, and the first time you use it you have to download a small piece of software – but this took literally a minute and I was able to join. The first thing I noticed about the Hangout was the clean interface. You can have up to 10 users at any one time (I think) and each user’s webcam feed is shown in a row along the middle of the screen, with the current “presenter’s” webcam (the person speaking at the time) in a larger box above the row of images. The Hangout software knows who is speaking at any moment and the larger box automatically switches camera to show the current speaker – very clever! Here are a couple of screenshots nabbed by Julian (hope he doesn’t mind me using them!)

The video was pretty smooth and the audio was excellent and seemed to sync well with the video, which made it really interactive. For about 40 minutes we talked about a range of topics including the pre- and post- Xmas slowdown in small business and the ways we could see ourselves using Hangouts to enhance our business. We experimented with the various tools too – you can all view a YouTube video simultaneously and use a CB-like button to talk over the top of it, and there’s a text messaging box that can be displayed on one side of the screen too. You can even give your webcam image antlers – a bit silly, but provided a few moments’ entertainment!

We also discovered that there’s a different version available – Hangouts with Extras – perhaps a beta, though it doesn’t actually say so. Apparently here you can share screens and write on some sort of message pad, and it integrates with Google Docs for document sharing. I’ll have to try that out some time!

I guess to sum up, Hangouts is a spontaneous videoconferencing facility with some added, interactive whiteboard-like extras. You don’t need to pre-book or schedule a Hangout, you simply click the “Start a Hangout” button on the right of your Google+ profile page. You can choose whether to invite specific people, or open the Hangout to certain Circles or for public viewing. I would imagine there’s also a way to make it private, though I haven’t worked that out yet.

So how could Hangouts be used for business? I wish I’d known about it back in early December when I did my blogging webinar, because it would have been a great way to follow up on the presentation. Rather than just finishing, I could have invited everyone to join me in a Hangout to collect feedback and answer any questions that participants had. I can also see it being really useful for internet-based networking, mastermind groups, focus groups and so on – the way the main camera view automatically shifts between speakers would make it great for virtual meetings, or collaboration between remote teams.  And it would also be really useful for impromptu client meetings, because it’s so quick and easy to start a Hangout. It might even become used for webinars, if I can work out how the Google Docs integration works.

I really enjoyed my first experience of Google+ Hangouts and can definitely see the potential for some exciting business use. Have you used Google+ Hangouts yet? I’d love to hear what you think of it, and what you’ve used it for!

The last six weeks have been really busy for me and I spent a lot of time writing blog posts for clients – which meant I ended up neglecting my own blog *slapped wrist*. So my New Year’s Resolution is to write here at least once a month … I’ve even scheduled it onto the calendar.

I’ve been writing posts on a really varied mix of topics for my clients – everything from technology reviews to internet marketing articles to adult dating tips! There really is no topic I won’t consider – so if you’d like someone to help you out with your blogging drop me a line and we’ll have a chat!

So today I’m thrilled to announce that I am part of the team of a brand new venture – HodgesNet. HodgesNet brings together a group of internet marketing professionals who can offer business owners the full range of internet marketing tools – everything from web design and SEO to email marketing, link building, blogging and affiliate marketing. I am the specialist copywriter on the team, so I will be helping businesses to get their blogging campaigns underway by writing customised articles and promoting those articles via social media. It’s a service I already offer under my own banner, but being part of the HodgesNet team raises my profile to a much wider market.

I’m really excited about the opportunity and we already have a few hot prospects lined up – so I’m looking forward to being very busy in the coming weeks and months!

Every day or two I post a couple of teaser extracts from the book on her website, along with details of where to buy it. The blog is linked to Twitter and Facebook so both accounts are updated with details of the new blog posts.  I also pick out an interesting fact or quote from each article and three or four times a day I tweet a selection of these nuggets along with a link back to the article. I’ve also been following lots of  relevant Tweeps (people with Twitter accounts) in the hope that they will follow back – and lots of them have.

Of course any Twitter account that looks like it’s either all automated or all sales stuff will not succeed – so I’m really pleased that the author has been involved too, replying to people she knows and retweeting interesting tweets herself. It means that her Twitter feed doesn’t look automated; it looks like a real person manages it – which is exactly what we set out to achieve. You can have a look for yourself here.

But better still, the results have been amazing. In the three weeks since we started working together traffic to her website is up 101% and her Twitter followers have doubled too. And of course this has resulted in an increased profile for the author and more sales of her book.

Social media isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and social media management – letting someone else manage your accounts – isn’t for everyone. But if you’d like to find out how I could help you increase your profile, your website and your sales through social media, please do drop me a line.

Fingers Image: Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Cup Image: ningmilo / FreeDigitalPhotos.net